Guessing the future

And 'possible to divine the future? And if so, how do people go about it than they do for a living? Calculations of probabilities and possibilities are more or less become a standard part of almost every modern theory. It is hard to find a better example to set a good method of risk assessment than studying the knowledge that the voluntary sector risk.

So what risk bigwig (read: investment) managers - who probably have a healthy dose of skepticism - consider the guidelines for evaluating future scenarios? What a paranoid streak risk being reduced to a specialist? And what makes their forecasts positive justification of their profession?

The answer most commonly used to both questions is, of course, the cliche ', if ..... Millionaire 'line. This is why it is not surprising that we bumped into theory after theory after theory, trying to understand what makes the risk issues crucial to understanding what is happening in the world in general.

First of all, in addition to discovering how the professionals risk evoke their theories, we try to emphasize why it is time we got around the problem from a cultural perspective. It's because recent cultural theories are pointing in the direction of a division between the realm of neurological research and the paranormal. This means that people are generally open to futuristic approaches. History and mythology to explain this quite adequately, but what about the future, all we can really do is guess. The hunt is now to find out how to make 'informed' hypothesis.

The business world is convinced of the merits of risk models that predict the future, because it makes a ton of money from them. Stories of success lead to intensified efforts by organizations not to fall behind. It 's an art to revoke bad scenarios and turning them into results that we all desire. Risk managers eagerly play in uncertainties and pretend to correct the negative aspects. It re-branded business decisions such as political risk.

Risk management has begun to attract the attention of people outside the business world, when some of his bitterest disaster experts said stars was predicted by the models, from the Asian currency crisis in 1997, followed by the 9 / attacks September 11, in New York. Both of these events could have been avoided if the information was fragmented, the politicians has not been so hung up on case law and their organizations had not soiled the structurally.

An expert on risk, Richard Slaughter, who wrote Else, a book that was published in 2002, offers both an explanation of the issues involved in risk assessment and what he calls 'a map of future context'. He, like many other risk specialists, broaches issues that undermine the welfare of society from the perspectives of socially structured. His colleague Ulrich Beck defines risk as 'the modern approach to predict and control the future consequences of human action'. It is interesting to note that narrows the area, showing how it is unlimited, as this human action involves the unintended consequences of radicalized modernization. "

Risk managers do something that a modern writer also excels in - write scenarios. The term has been purchased by a novelist and screenwriter, Leo Rosten, who happened to freelance for a company called RAND Corporation during the time when the spiritual father of Risk Management, Herman Kahn, a physicist, mathematician and nuclear strategist was involved is writing screenplays in 1940. Incidentally, Kahn later founded his own foundation, the Hudson Institute in 1961. The example of Kahn was applied by two Shell employees Ted Newland and Pierre Wack, who in late 1960 and early 1970, the company's pioneering approach to risk, imagining where Shell as a company was going forward in the years when the world was going.

Wack, who died recently, has become a leader in the field of risk to the art of writing scenario to the heart of any strategy appropriate risk. "Scenarios transform information into perceptions ... It is a creative experience that generates an 'Aha!' And ... leads to strategic insights beyond the reach of mind before, "he once said.

Research to involve everyday life scenarios that are not readily available in the normal financial systems that depend on a categorization of the world in terms of industrial and economic parameters, became highly topical after 2002. An immediate consequence of the success of specialists in risk prediction of crises like the Asian currency crisis and the 9/11 was the further maturation of the discipline itself. It is not possible to group them into a political entity or any other social category. The risk is a powerful mobilizing agent, however, that pushes the action is by those in power and the people in the face of threats.

The scenarios that risk models evoke more or less all involve fictitious events and our willingness to take seriously if scenarios has become stronger, as risk managers underlined the seriousness of their gospel, in the wake of disasters. A people emission observed after 1997 and 2002 is that our perception of time seems to have undergone a revision. "The onrushing future - something non-existent, constructed and fictitious - had already moved past as an influence on the present," according to Beck.

One result was the increased popularity of chaos and systems theory. "Reflecting the designers' belief that the best future possible, since if a dummy could be detected and updated. Risks are, after all, a kind of virtual reality, real virtuality." Says Beck. Phrases associated with the trend include 'contextual thinking', 'intertextuality', 'calculability'. "When you're trying to find that middle ground between paralysis and denial, you can not entertain 15 scenarios and actually do something significant. At the same time, you do not want to converge on a version of the future, [but] it should be able to capture 80 percent or more of the major uncertainties in the landscape. the world will always throw a little 'curve balls at you, "says Chris Ertel, a senior professional of Global Business Network in San Francisco specializing in planning scenarios.

What would be a risk manager to take into account, trying to circumvent a false representation of power structures and consequences of human actions? If millions of investments are involved, the incentive to have a correct perspective of the business impact is quite important. But risk management is also widely used in normal business and nonprofit organizations, not least because of the efforts of Peter Schwartz, who used to be responsible for the risks to the Shell and who wrote a seminal book entitled 'The Art of the Long View '. The answer to this question are for the most deeply philosophical, rather than of a practical nature. Beck talks about a post-World Political technocratic society. And for the others to speak in riddles keyword type. A key word is 'reflexive'. Firmly founded in post modern philosophy, there was a dead-end alternative to the gospel preached by relativists.

A very practical approach was illustrated in an interview Maryln Walton, a leader of the team scene at Herman Miller, an agency specializing in work environments, recently published in See. In response to the question why his company was interested in the design scene, said: "The [..] angle is to explore how the work will change. We wanted to impact scenario, considering both issues within the broader strategic company and also our design and development strategy. We wanted to know how to present the reality that would shape the future and what the product designers should be thinking. [..] A key principle is to select and orient a group committed to the cross functional . We include a variety of backgrounds and different types. set of thinking skills and I do it for a couple of reasons - to develop thinking abilities and wide spread experience in many parts of the organization that we can at the end, I guess we nearly 500 people exposed to the planning scenario. and a new way of thinking about the future. The next step is to decide on the focal issue. Once the focal question is decided, we try to think of the main forces of change, and in doing that expose gaps in our knowledge - .. which brings us to the research and interviewing experts [..] The next step is to convene a meeting of two days with experts'

It seems pretty simple and logical. There have been few occasions when the systems were adopted for the test, which is a blessing, of course, because most of the risk scenarios involve disasters. But the crises that are valued above all taught us that for a model to be truly effective, its combination with 'manufactured uncertainty' recalls the unlikely synthesis of knowledge and unawareness. It would be impossible to assume that a particular balance is excellent and there are laws here that can be considered as direct casting into stone.

But probably works somewhat similar to the fashion trend forecasting, something that virtually every woman shows a natural talent for. Entering historical data on shapes and sizes and colors evoking the outlook is likely to be easy compared to the complexity of the larger reality. However, conjectures, reflections, patterns of self-reference and repetition are some of the phenomena that the post-modern philosophy has prepared since the early 1970's. Reflexive supporters apparently have nothing to be submerged under the imminent all the knowledge that the future is a mass of incalculable hazardous events. Instead aim to carve out a political impulse modeling that we propose is directly activated by manufactured uncertainty.

In addition to the corporate sector, which only looks at because it is a good indicator to see if risk managers can be taken seriously, there are some artistic projects that cover several buildings uncertainties in relation to reality. One of these is Hexen 2039, a project that explores the relationship between the military and occult theories for psychological warfare. The project is centered on a living person fictitional in 2039, an alter ego of Susan Treister, the artist, which is part of an institution and Militronics Interventionality Advanced Time (a fictional organization of the 21 th century) and travels back in regular time. The character is both an attraction and an object of study, because the project comes a ton of factual information about the past of military organizations and historical events involving the use of occult and hidden informational techniques. This means that the fiction is not so farfetched.

In 2039, the alter egos, called Rosalind Brodsky travels to an assignment at West Point U.S. Military Academy, located on the banks of the Hudson River, 50 miles north of Manhattan, in the State of New York. Following investigations of the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Psyop) based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, assignment to West Point is part of an investigation into early forms of hypnosis audio or silent sound technologies that alter pattersn EEG of the brain, used for military purposes.

Sounds totally sci fi? And 'because it is fiction! But the project will connect the deflector as real historical details for a probable future. For example, Brodsky accidentally discovers that in 1939 the Military Academy was used as the setting for the witch's tower scene in the movie the Wizard of Oz. And 'one of the least impressive of the facts of the project, and Treister establishes a mysterious relationship between Hollywood and the U.S. military. It seems that the military used remote viewing techniques (projection of human consciousness from one place to another and to obtain accurate information about remote places and hidden) that have been meticulously described in a film not turned away from the particular military institution involved. The more you can get scary? The facts that Treister outlines throw up a mountain of moral implications, but the military and possible claims for the future is obviously something completely different compared to civilian life.

When a high-profile scenario is leaked to the public and is subsequently challenged by other professionals, the implications are usually quite harmful. But in general, risk experts are becoming increasingly accepted in the public domain. "Scenario planning is presented on the surface as a noble intellectual activities, but in the end is really all about engaging people and connecting people with their passions and their curiosity about the world and how it's changing," says Chris Ertel. A much sought after quality in decision-maker is 'contextual intelligence', the ability to think laterally, which is kind of intersection between intellect and emotional intelligence.